Customer satisfaction is the ultimate way to win referrals and grow your service business. While quality of the job performed is important, reliability and customer interaction is equally critical to the success of your business. Customers share their experiences with friends and family and leave reviews online; you need to become their go-to recommendation for...

Having a vacation policy might feel like unnecessary burden – what’s wrong with playing it by ear? – but getting this particular bit of HR policy in writing is important. Paid time off plays a key role in stress management for most workers, which, when set up properly, can lead to higher productivity and decreased...

Handling late payments is never easy; finding the right balance between being firm enough to protect your business interests and accommodating enough to earn a strong reputation among your customers is an art. It’s a mixture of soft skills, hard policy, and rigorous account tracking, but if you have the right system in place collecting...

Good employees are hard to find, but sometimes the things we do to hire the right people can lead to bad consequences. Certain questions, no matter how well-intentioned, break the law. Save yourself a potential lawsuit, and make sure these kinds of questions aren’t in your interview routine. Before we get started, though, it’s important...

Managing a Distributed Investing in business technology is often a smart move, but should employee cell phone plans be a part of it? Modern service businesses rely heavily on mobile technology for dispatching, invoicing, and communication, but there’s a difference between buying a few tablets and giving your employees something they take home at the...

As all business owners know, the job never really ends. There’s always something you need to take care of, a call you need to answer, an email you need to write; but there’s also a limit to how productive you can be without breaks or downtime. Long shifts and aggressive schedules don’t just lead to...

Every business needs insurance, but for contracting businesses you need more than just general liability coverage. As a small business owner, you need to be on top of your insurance plan, as a gap in coverage can lead to disastrous results. Unlike larger businesses, you aren’t in a position to carry a large deficit across multiple...

No one likes the IRS, especially when they’re asking questions. Audits aren’t as rare as they seem, but there’s a lot you can do to make them less probable. Despite popular opinion, the IRS are relatively easy to work with if you’ve kept clear and consistent records. If you’re looking to future-proof your business operations,...

Digital marketing is more accessible than ever, but the industry does a poor job of explaining itself to small businesses. As a service business owner it can be hard to find the time to build your own ads and develop a diverse marketing plan, but at the same time it can be hard to work...

While most service businesses operate in the consumer space, business to business networking is an important part of small business operation. If you haven’t taken the time to network with your local chamber of commerce, you may be missing out on connections that can have a strong influence on your bottom line. Getting to know...